We launched Smart Citation email alerts a few months ago to help our users stay on top of the scientific conversation: whenever a paper with an alert was referenced in a newer paper, we would send out a daily email digest to the user notifying them that the paper was cited.

So for example, you could set an alert on papers you published and claimed in scite, and be notified of new citation statements that referenced the findings in those papers as we indexed them.

It’s not quite real-time, but pretty close. And seeing how something was referenced was easy: you could just open the report page and read it, saving you the hassle of finding each new paper and scanning the whole thing to figure out what they said.

The emails from our initial version of this feature used to simply list out the paper that was referenced, and how many supporting, mentioning, and contrasting statements we detected. But, to actually see what was said, you had to click through and read them within our website.

Well, after trying it out for a few months, some of our users -- you know who you are! -- provided valuable feedback such as:

• Seeing citation statements directly within the email is more useful so I can skim them quickly and manage them in my email (folders, etc.)

• Seeing metadata about the citing papers within emails is crucial so that I can figure out if it’s something I’ve already read, or new to me. It’s necessary for discoverability, without it, I don’t know if the information in the email is relevant to me.

We thought that was perfectly sensible, so we revamped our alert emails accordingly.

These new emails mirror our report pages: you can immediately see metadata about the paper that was referenced, what was said about it in the citation statements, what section it was referenced in, the classification from our system, and metadata about who the paper that actually referenced it – all in one place!

We’re pretty excited about this change, especially because even though we relied on these email alerts internally and use them regularly, it took feedback from our users before we realized how much better they could be.

As always, if you have any feedback about scite, good or bad, please don’t hesitate to write to us -- we’re always listening.

Learn more about what alerts can do for you, or go ahead and try it out on papers you’ve claimed, your saved searches, or dashboards to be notified as new citations happen.

Happy sciting!,

scite team